USA Softball Womens National Team arrives in Europe for Italian Softball Week and ISF XIV World Championship

Azzano
Decimo, Italy - The USA Softball Women’s National Team arrived in Italy on
Wednesday to compete in one last international tournament in preparation for
the 2014 International Softball Federation (ISF) XIV Women’s World Championship
which kicks off August 15 in Haarlem, Netherlands. Beginning today, Team USA
will join Australia and Italy in the Italian Softball Week event in Azzano
Decimo, Italy. Following the four-day tournament, the USA Women’s National Team
will travel to Haarlem to begin their quest for a tenth ISF Women’s World
Championship Gold.

Italian
Softball Week, August 7-10

Italian
Softball Week begins with round-robin play at 10 a.m. CDT (5 p.m. local) on
August 7 when Team USA takes the field with Australia. The opening contest will
be immediately followed by USA versus Italy at 1:30 p.m. CDT (8:30 local). Play
continues August 8-9 with the three teams playing each other twice. On August
10, the teams with the second a third best records will play in a semifinal
contest at 11 a.m. CDT (6 p.m. local) with the winner advancing to play the
team with the best pool-play record in the finals at 2:00 p.m. CDT (9 p.m.
local).

The
USA Women will travel to Haarlem, Netherlands on August 11 for the ISF Women’s
World Championship. They’ll kick off the event by playing the host country, the
Netherlands on August 15 at 1 p.m. CDT (8 p.m. local time). Following their
opening game with Netherlands, the USA is scheduled to play six other pool-play
games: Botswana on August 16, Chinese Taipei on August 17, Great Britain on
August 18, Australia on August 19, Dominican Republic on August 20 and Italy on
August 21. The playoffs are scheduled to begin on August 22 with the finals on
August 24.

In the
most previous ISF Women’s World Championship in 2012, the USA fell to Japan 2-1
(ten innings) in the championship game to claim the silver medal. It was just
the fourth time in the history of the event that Team USA came away with
anything other than Gold. This season, the USA Women are coming off of a
first-place finish in the General Tire World Cup of Softball and a second-place
finish at the Canadian Open.

The
ISF plans to stream the World Championship tournament online. The link for the
streaming as well as live stats will be available via www.usasoftball.com throughout the
tournament.

Ken
Eriksen (Tampa, Fla./ Head Coach of Univ. of South Florida) leads the way in
his fourth year as the head coach and is joined by assistant coaches Laura Berg
(Corvallis, Ore../Head Coach at Oregon State), Howard Dobson (Orange,
Texas/Assistant Coach at LSU) and Lisa Dodd (San Diego, Calif./Head Coach at
the UNLV).

About ASA
The Amateur Softball Association, founded in 1933, is the National Governing
Body of softball in the United States and a member of the United States Olympic
Committee. The ASA has become one of the nation’s largest sports organizations
and now sanctions competition in every state through a network of 76 local
associations. The ASA has grown from a few hundred teams in the early days to
over 165,000 teams today, representing a membership of more than 2.5 million.
For more information on the ASA, visit http://www.asasoftball.com/.About USA
Softball
USA Softball is the brand created, operated and owned by the ASA that links the
USA Men’s, Women’s, Junior Boys’ and Junior Girls’ National Team programs
together. USA Softball is responsible for training, equipping and promoting
these four National Teams to compete in international and domestic
competitions. The USA Softball Women’s National Team is one of the only two
women’s sports involved in the Olympic movement to capture three consecutive
gold medals at the Olympic Games since 1996. The U.S. women have also won nine
World Championship titles including the last seven consecutive as well as
claimed six World Cup of Softball titles. For more information about USA
Softball, please visithttp://www.usasoftball.com.

About ISFHeadquartered in Plant City, Florida (USA), the ISF is a member of
the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the world governing body for
the sport which is recognized by the International Olympic Committee and
SportAccord (formerly the General Association of International Sports
Federations). Softball (women’s fast pitch) made its Olympic debut at the 1996
Games in Atlanta. There are 127 affiliated countries in the ISF and millions of
participants in the sport worldwide.